Inheritance; Lan Samantha Chang; 2004

Lan Samantha Chang leaves her Hunger comfort zone of the Chinese-American experience and the short form to write Inheritance: a Novel of a Chinese family in the years leading up to WWII (and not about dragons).  While I think Hunger is a much stronger work, this is still worth a read, if only to get to "The Lake of Dreams" section of the book.  In fact, I might even recommend forgoing the first 250 pages and reading "The Lake of Dreams" as a novella.  It would be somewhat rough going, not being able to immediately place every name in relation to the narrator, but that disorientation resolves itself as you read on.

Sadly, Inheritance also enters the Annals of Bad Editing for the following:

Hsiao Taitai held the reigns...  [pg 119 of the first edition hardcover]

and then

He had the room for one [a maid]; and he liked the idea of a young woman, one of these wasp-wasted... [pg 125]

It was the second typo, within 6 pages of the first, that riled me.  Someone get the copyeditor more coffee!

[note: post backdated to when I originally finished the novel and wrote up notes on it, but actually published on 8/25/2013]